Shooting Live: Off to Singapore on a Royal Tour

Monday 10th September

Singapore

The flight to Singapore was a busy one, ours the earlier of two BA flights last evening had one or two of the usual media suspects on board, Arthur Edwards and the BBC being amongst them.

The later flight would have the rest including my colleagues from ITN.

We were going to cover the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their trip to Singapore, Malaysia, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. We would not all be going to Tuvalu, me included.

I'd had a long wait in Heathrow's terminal 3 after the short flight from Edinburgh.

The good news was that my kit had been checked through to Singapore and I had also cleared customs in Edinburgh. So, I just had me, my hand baggage and one of my cameras to schlep between terminals, thankfully not any of the seven boxes.

I spent the time at the airport getting a final few bits and pieces for the trip along with having some food.

Surprisingly the seven hour wait passed more easily than I thought it would.

When we arrived in Singapore my passage through customs along with Tony from the BBC was painless.

We were fairly quickly in a large taxi taking us to one of Singapore's most well known hotels, the Shangri-La.

As you would expect from a hotel if this caliber we were in our rooms with all our gear very quickly aided by porters in their bright red uniforms topped with classic style bell hop hats.

Shangri-La lobby

Then we started to get into what would be happening tomorrow with the logistical and technical problems that would need to be sorted out.

Logistically this would not be easy because the Duke and Duchess would be arriving at the airport when we would be setting up and doing our live broadcasts from the Botanical Gardens which they would also be visiting when we were on air.

The problem was that the live broadcast position was, as we were lead to understand, at the other side of the park from where the couple would be doing their thing.

Also we wanted to get the arrival shots on air as soon as possible.

The news on that front from London was that Reuters would be providing those pictures, possibly on a live feed.

The other thing that we need to try and do is get a few shots of the Orchid that will be named after Prince William's mother and some vox pops with people waiting to see him and Kate.

First of all though we would have to go to the media briefing at the British High Commission where we would be given all the fine detail of the tour and start to organise the way the pool would work.

After having had a meal I went back to my room which very quickly became a technical explosion that mirrored what my lounge at home looked like just over thirty hours ago as I had kit all over the place getting it sorted out and doing last minute tests to make sure that all my stuff was working as it should.